ART ON THE WAY - October 2010

Besides my love of landscape, and increasing interest in texture, I have an immense love for people.

Vincent van Gogh was quoted as saying "The more I think it over, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people."

My works currently reflect this, particularly in light of the everyONEcounts campaign where we as artists are joining together in a campaign to bring attention to the plight of abandoned babies, and to abandoned lives in general. 

My work took a turn from landscape painting I began painting ‘sorrowful images’ but that I found beautiful. I first believed that the works were considering the relationship between ‘sorrow and beauty’. However, I realized through the process that they were in fact about ‘sorrow and light’. Beauty requires the viewer’s consideration and perspective, whilst light exists on its own. Light represents hope, and hope in the midst of sorrow exists because of love.

SCRATCHING SURFACES - 2009

“I am not sure what it is saying to me, but Africa Speaks” Jung: On Africa

Besides my constant interest in the African landscape and the fascination that I have with people as figures on, from and of this landscape, my works on this exhibition reflect my interest in textures, in surfaces and the ever process of mark-making.

As the title of this exhibition would suggest, the viewer is required to look beyond the immediate surface, to go beyond the first impression. In both the layering of paint and in the use of found objects and cut out images, there is a strong suggestion to look for more than the obvious.

Some of the works on exhibit will be lean towards the traditional in execution and outcome (the “Blue Skies” series), while others will reflect a more varied and ‘contemporary’ approach that I have taken.

Both have been inspired by the sometimes surreal South African landscape, and by the many people who walk, work and live along the roads that I travel on, on a daily basis. I see them ‘intimately’ … although I don’t know them personally. At first glance, there appears to be chaos and/or despair but in fact the opposite is true … street vendors systematically store, stack and sell their goods … taxies dash, hooters hoot … and in amongst discarded bottle tops and found fragile rusting tins … gold ! Treasures, gems and precious finds to those who have the time and the Hope to see, and to hear … Africa Speaks! 

RICH TERRAIN – Berlin 2008/2009

The creative process began for me as a child in the small mining town of Springs, on the East Rand, 60 kms east of Johannesburg, where I worked with whatever I could find. My childhood was extremely happy and my love for the earth started then as I played – mostly in the dust, in soil and mud amongst stone and rock, under trees and amongst their leaves, beneath skies and next to rivers, with friends and alone. I was indeed from, and in a Rich Terrain.

Amidst twists and turns, pebbled roads and the occasional perfect path, my adventure through life has mostly had unexpected surprises.

With my continued love for the earth and its people, I continue to explore their fragile but intimate connections - a relationship that I am exploring through my use of photo-images, oil paintings and mixed media. This concept intrigues me as I sense a lack of permanence in the images of people contrasted with timeless landscapes that seem to have no boundaries ... either way, all of what I hear, feel and see ... is a result of what I hear, what Africa says to me.

THE SA CONNECTION – London 2008

With my continued love for the earth and its people, I explore their fragile but intimate connections - a relationship that I am exploring through my use of photo-images and oil paintings. This concept intrigues me because photos, attached by magnets, can easily be moved to different points in these paintings, or even removed altogether so that I sense a lack of permanence in the images of people contrasted with timeless landscapes that seem to have no boundaries – as we do.

The photographs are intimate yet not personal and simply capture a brief, unexpected but not necessarily significant moment in time; travelling to work, busy with the tasks of the day or going home. However insignificant these moments might be, there is a connectedness of spirit that extends the limitations of the immediate ... the spirit of Hope, which gives purpose, direction and meaning to our lives.

EARTH, LIGHT AND SPIRIT – Durban 2007

MATINS

Somewhere, out at the edges, the night
Is turning and the waves of darkness
Begin to brighten the shore of dawn

The heavy dark falls back to earth
And the freed air goes wild with light,
The heart fills with fresh, bright breath
And thoughts stir to give birth to colour

I arise to day

In the name of Silence
Womb of the Word,
In the name of Stillness
Home of Belonging,
In the name of the Solitude
of the Soul and the Earth

I arise today

Blessed by all things
wings of breath,
delight of eyes,
wonder of whisper,
intimacy of touch,
eternity of soul,
urgency of thought,
miracle of health,
embrace of God

May I live this day

Compassionate of heart,
Gentle in word,
Gracious in awareness
Courageous in thought,
Generous in love
Eternal Echoes

John O’Donohue

There is no way surely that I could express as well as John O’Donohue does in Eternal Echoes this Matins. As I try to pen down an “artist’s statement” I find myself frustrated at not being able to convey in words what would make sense to you the reader and then remember that this is why I paint.

I grapple and fumble with a multitude of words and as many an emotion that swirl within me; how do I convey to you what I struggle with myself.

In painting I find myself wrestling with the slowness with which outflows the paint from the tube. Covered in colour I work in rags so rich in hues of hot sienna’s, umbers, solemn browns and burnt oranges, and of graying whites and dying reds. I scumble, scratch and scrape and pull the paint across the canvas ever searching for tones that eventually relent and release images of faces, figures and forms that pull through to the surface from surrounding seas and lands revealing themselves but only partly … with just enough detail to reveal their spirit.

I paint and I create so that I discover the light within the dark, and the spirit, which is Hope within this time of Earth.

Lara Mellon

2007